Milan and Paris delivered a menswear season that will be remembered not just for its ideas but for its context. As a punishing heatwave swept Europe – temperatures hitting 99°F in Milan and breaking records in Paris – the Spring/Summer 2027 collections arrived with an unusual sense of urgency. The question hanging over every runway was no longer theoretical: how do you dress a man for a future where summer means 40-degree days? The answer, according to designers from Miuccia Prada to Michael Rider, lies in a radical lightness – of fabric, of silhouette, of colour, of mood.
Milan Fashion Week Men’s ran from 19 to 23 June 2026, with 75 events including 16 physical runway shows and 44 presentations, according to the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana. Paris followed immediately, from 23 to 28 June, with 74 labels showing across 36 runway shows and 38 presentations – a notable increase over the January session’s 66 labels. As Pascal Morand, executive president of the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode, told Vogue Business: “This season has showcased fashion’s extraordinary resilience. It demonstrated a sense of solidarity in the ecosystem.”
Here are the ten trends that emerged from the combined runways – and what they tell us about where menswear is heading.
1. The Muted Palette: Sun-Faded, Not Bright
The loudest statement this season was colour restraint. Aqua blue, candy pink, cashmere yellow, sun-faded brown, and powder dominated the runways in Milan, led by Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons at Prada and Alessandro Sartori at Zegna. Prada’s collection, which Mower described as stripped-back and focused on closet staples, leaned into “anti-complication, anti-decoration” – Simons said at a pre-show press conference – with a colour language that suggested clothes already lived-in, already loved. The palette felt deliberately anti-seasonal: not the punchy primaries of resort wear, but the washed-out warmth of a photograph left in the sun. At Zegna, Sartori continued his exploration of quiet materiality, with fluid knits and soft tailoring rendered in tones that evoked raw cashmere and undyed wool.
2. Wide-Leg Trousers and Bermuda Shorts: The New Proportions
Silhouette was the story. Wide-leg trousers – high-waisted or low-slung – replaced the slim-cut trouser across Milan and Paris. At Ralph Lauren, which returned to the Milan schedule for the second consecutive year, relaxed chinos and wide-leg denim formed the backbone of a show that Dazed executive editor Jack Sunnucks called “a remix of all the codes that he set the blueprint for: preppiness, aged denim, tailoring, chinos, and blazers.” Bermuda shorts appeared at Simone Rocha – making her first dedicated menswear presentation at Pitti Uomo – where the Irish designer translated her signature pearl embellishments and broderie anglaise into a vocabulary that felt entirely new on a male body. In Paris, Yohji Yamamoto showed baggy gabardine shorts, while Soshiotsuki – the 2025 LVMH Prize winner making his Paris calendar debut – offered classically elegant linen shorts that Mower praised as evidence of “the preppy revival continuing in a more sporty vein.”
3. Lightweight Outerwear: Capes, Translucent Anoraks, the Paper-Thin Trench
Outerwear was defined by what it wasn’t: heavy. The heatwave made this a practical necessity, but designers turned it into an aesthetic. At Celine, Michael Rider – whose menswear debut was widely described as the week’s standout – showed fluid layers that moved like scarves more than coats. In Paris, Dries Van Noten’s Julian Klausner presented what Vogue Runway called a “lyrical, ultra-lightweight” collection that was “entrancing to behold even in the 100-degree heat.” Klausner’s pieces included backless chiffon halters and scarf-tied tops with ribbon straps – outerwear reduced to its most essential, most breathable form. At Rick Owens, the response was characteristically extreme: inflatable garments with built-in air conditioning units, presented as part of a collaboration with Adidas. As Vogue’s Jian DeLeon noted, the designs felt “prescient” given the climate crisis.
The suit is not dead – it has been re-engineered. Across both cities, designers married traditional tailoring silhouettes with performance fabrics. Louis Vuitton under Pharrell Williams showed nylon suiting with water-resistant treatment on the opening night of Paris Fashion Week, staged at the Cité Internationale Universitaire with a wave installation that became the week’s most discussed spectacle. At Dries Van Noten, Klausner’s collection – his third as creative director – used technical fabrics to achieve its extraordinary lightness. Lemaire, as always, offered understated excellence in fabric innovation. Paul Smith described his Milan collection as “mostly tailored, but very, very lightweight – made in silk cotton with hardly any interlining, so you can wear it in the heat.”
5. Shorts as Underwear: Volume on Top, Skin Below
The boldest silhouette statement was the shortest garment. Dolce & Gabbana opened their Milan show with muscular models in nothing but cotton shorts and dressing gowns – a provocation that Vogue Business flagged as emblematic of the “looksmaxxing era” reshaping menswear casting. At Saint Laurent, Anthony Vaccarello staged his show at the Bourse de Commerce enveloped in fog by Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya, with models emerging as silhouettes in fitted shorts and sheer fabrics. The combination of voluminous tops with brief lower halves appeared across both cities: at Simone Rocha’s pearl-studded shorts, at Willy Chavarria’s Paris presentation, and at Ralph Lauren, where a model in a tight black knit and shorts “drove a lot of conversation post-show,” according to Vogue Business.
6. Layering Without Bulk: Thin Layers, Texture Mixing
The paradox of SS27 was that lightness did not mean single garments. Designers mastered the art of layering with paper-thin fabrics that created depth without trapping heat. Zegna’s Sartori showed multiple fine-gauge knits layered over one another, each in a slightly different tonal register. At Acne Studios, Johnny Johansson mixed textures – sheer knits over cotton, silk over linen – to create outfits that looked complex but wore cool. This approach reflected what Harrods buying director Simon Longland identified as a broader shift: “The exceptional temperatures became an unavoidable part of the week and reinforced many of the themes we saw on the runway: lightness, ease, and relaxed sophistication.”
7. Utility Jackets: Multiple Pockets, Zero Bulk
The utility jacket – always a menswear staple – was refined for extreme heat. Julian Klausner’s Dries Van Noten showed featherweight utility pieces with multiple pockets rendered in technical fabrics. At Lanvin, new creative director Peter Copping presented his first standalone men’s collection on the official Paris schedule, drawing on 1930s Surrealist references – “the men of that era, particularly André Breton,” he explained – to create utility silhouettes with an intellectual edge. Jonathan Anderson at Dior continued his project of uniting menswear and womenswear codes, sending out utility-inflected pieces that echoed the house’s couture heritage while remaining resolutely contemporary.
8. Florals: Prints, Embroidery, and Live Flowers
Floral motifs were everywhere – not as a cliché but as a genuine creative force. Sarah Burton’s first dedicated menswear collection for Givenchy, presented in Paris, drew on the house’s couture sensibility to produce embroidered florals that blurred the line between masculine and feminine. As Vogue Business noted, Burton’s Givenchy man and woman are “related” – “she is uniting those two worlds,” said Gro Curtis, editor-in-chief of Icon America. At Dries Van Noten, Klausner’s impressionistic prints evoked garden scenes in watercolour washes. Simone Rocha’s Pitti show featured live flowers among the pearl embellishments, while Dior under Anderson showed floral motifs that connected directly to the women’s collections – a “brother and sister” relationship, Mower wrote in Vogue Runway.
9. Relaxed Suiting: Worn on Bare Skin
The suit was worn like a second skin – often over none at all. Saint Laurent’s Vaccarello showed tailoring worn on bare chests, the fog obscuring and revealing in equal measure. At Louis Vuitton, Pharrell Williams presented relaxed suiting with surf-inspired references, the opening night show generating what Wallpaper called “a blockbuster happening.” Zegna continued Sartori’s vision of unstructured tailoring, while Ralph Lauren showed his Purple Label suiting with the nonchalance of a man dressing for a weekend in the Hamptons. As Bruce Pask, associate vice president at Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus, observed: “Paris men’s fashion week has become the dominant global menswear marketplace, with shows, presentations, and multi-brand showrooms across the city filled with collections from around the world.”
10. Accessories: Oversized Bags, Summer Shoes, and the Return of Gloves
Accessories told the season’s most specific stories. Oversized bags appeared at Dolce & Gabbana, Celine, and Giorgio Armani – the latter’s show presented for the first time by Leo Dell’Orco and Silvana Armani together, following the house’s announcement that Giorgio Armani would not take his usual runway bow. Summer footwear leaned towards raffia and transparent materials, designed to disappear into the foot. Gloves – an unlikely summer accessory – appeared at Celine, Dries Van Noten, and IM Men, functioning as a styling detail rather than a practical garment. Neck pendants and keychains emerged as the season’s punctuation marks, shown at Auralee, Lemaire, Celine, and Dior – small, personal objects that signalled the return of adornment in menswear without descending into excess.
Where Menswear Is Heading
The SS27 season clarified something that had been building for several years: menswear is no longer a single conversation. It is a series of parallel dialogues – between tailoring and sportswear, between restraint and embellishment, between the body as it is and the body as social media imagines it. The heatwave accelerated trends that were already in motion: lightweight fabrics, relaxed proportions, breathable construction. But it also raised uncomfortable questions. As Vogue Runway’s Amy Verner put it: “If this is going to be the new normal, if next summer will be really hot again, are these collections properly corresponding to what summer is going to feel like?”
The creative director appointments of 2024 and 2025 – Rider at Celine, Burton at Givenchy, Anderson at Dior, Copping at Lanvin, Klausner at Dries Van Noten – are now producing their second and third collections, and the results are substantive rather than tentative. These are designers building sustained bodies of work, not making splashy debuts. The menswear industry faces real headwinds – 26,000 multi-brand stores closed in Italy over the past five years, and the market declined 1.7% to €9.38 billion between 2024 and 2025. But the response, as Carlo Capasa, president of the CNMI, noted, is that “creativity remains the driving force of Italian fashion.”
The man being dressed for Spring 2027 is lighter, less armoured, more adorned than his predecessor. He wears a suit that breathes, shorts that show, and a pendant that catches the light. Whether that man is ready for 40-degree summers is another question entirely – but his wardrobe, at least, is prepared.
